THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 10, 2023):
The Book Review’s daily critics — Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai — reflect on the books that stuck with them in 2023.
By Jennifer Szalai, Alexandra Jacobs and Dwight Garner
Films, TV shows, albums, books, art and A.I.-generated SpongeBob performances that reporters, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.
Current and former European diplomats said there was growing concern a second Trump presidency could mean an American retreat from the continent and a gutting of NATO.
The president, Elizabeth Magill, and the chairman of the board of trustees, Scott L. Bok, are leaving after intense pressure from donors, politicians and alumni.
The return of budget tour groups from mainland China is sparking frustrations — and a dose of snobbery — in a city starved for business.
Two- and three-wheeled vehicles, used by billions of people, are moving away from fossil fuels to batteries faster than cars in countries that have made the energy transition a priority.
The agreement over the A.I. Act solidifies one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of artificial intelligence.
The veto came amid a warning that “civil order is breaking down” in Gaza, and a day after the Biden administration warned that Israel’s military had not done enough to reduce harm to civilians.
The Iranian-backed militia in Yemen has launched drone and missile attacks on Israeli and American targets. American officials fear the group could go too far and incite a wider war.
Split over the leadership of Sam Altman, board members and executives turned on one another. Their brawl exposed the cracks at the heart of the A.I. movement.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 8, 2023):
How do you reinvent yourself after being a global superstar? The former R.E.M. frontman is still figuring that out.
By Jon Mooallem
When Michael Stipe was little, his parents called him Mr. Mouse. He was a scurrier. As soon as he could stand, he ran, and when he ran, he ran until he face-planted. His mother would deposit him in a baby walker, but if Stipe scrambled as fast as he could and hit the threshold of a doorway with a running start, he could topple the walker and eject himself onto the floor. Then he’d spring to his feet and run away.
When detained by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea, even children fleeing violence have no right to asylum — and often face an uncertain fate.
By Seth Freed Wessler
Tcherry’s mother could see that her 10-year-old son was not being taken care of. When he appeared on their video calls, his clothes were dirty. She asked who in the house was washing his shirts, the white Nike T-shirt and the yellow one with a handprint that he wore in rotation. He said nobody was, but he had tried his best to wash them by hand in the tub. His hair, which was buzzed short when he lived with his grandmother in Haiti, had now grown long and matted. He had already been thin, but by January, after three months in the smuggler’s house, he was beginning to look gaunt. Tcherry told his mother that there was not enough food. He said he felt “empty inside.”
The Justice Department charged President Biden’s son after a long-running and wide-ranging investigation with substantial political repercussions.
The government in Kyiv remains hopeful of further American assistance, but it is also looking to other resources — and trying to make clear what could be at stake.
Israel has recovered a trove of material that its military has used to assess the extent of the group’s attack plans, and its tactics and abilities, information reviewed by The Times shows.
A state court judge said a woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition could legally obtain an abortion despite the state’s bans.
The administration has already alerted Congress that money for Ukraine will run out by the end of the year.
As ambassador to the United Nations, Ms. Haley strove to stay in the president’s favor and avoided some battles to change his mind on contentious issues.
Street Cop Training, a private police training company, encouraged the use of unconstitutional tactics, a report by New Jersey’s comptroller says.
Gen Z and young Millennials often see Israel as an occupying power oppressing Palestinians — a shock to their parents and grandparents, who tend to see it as an essential haven fighting for survival.
Amid some of the war’s heaviest bombing, Israeli forces battled Hamas deep into the city of Khan Younis, with few signs that Israel was heeding Biden administration calls to show more restraint.
Legislation to send military aid to Ukraine and Israel was on the brink of collapse, after a briefing devolved into a screaming match one day before a critical test vote in the Senate.
Alarmed by the power of artificial intelligence, Europe, the United States and others are trying to respond — but the technology is evolving more rapidly than their policies.
Facing a severe shortage of aides and high costs, people trying to keep aging loved ones at home often cobble together a patchwork of family and friends to help.
Israel, escalating its assault against Hamas in southern Gaza, warned civilians there to evacuate, but some said there was nowhere left to go.
Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.
The warning, in a letter to congressional leaders, comes as Republican support for funding Kyiv’s war effort is waning, and an emergency funding package is stalled in Congress.
Nearly 200 inmates left a high-security Russian prison to join the war in Ukraine, seeking redemption, money or freedom. Many were killed or wounded.
As its ground forces prepared to move in the south of Gaza, residents there were told to leave their homes, spreading fear and confusion.
Eighty percent of Gazans are displaced from their homes as Israel orders more evacuations. See where thousands have been sheltering amid the war’s destruction.
The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it. Then distrust fueled a spiraling competition.
Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
Beleaguered Gazans, having fled the territory’s north, emerged from a night of bombardment wondering where to go next for safety.
A nationwide shortage of controllers has resulted in an exhausted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making dangerous mistakes.
Two years after death threats and aspersions roiled little Silverton, the town has found a semblance of peace and a lesson for a ruptured nation.
In Russia, the pain and loss of the war in Ukraine are felt most profoundly in small villages, where a soldier’s burial produces not just grief but a yearning to find meaning in his death.
